Our Fitness Blog

How to Successfully Track Your Fitness Progress

It has been 12 weeks since you started your fitness journey. You’ve been eating the right foods and getting your workouts in at least three to four days a week, but you don’t notice any changes. You start to doubt your body and your ability to achieve your fitness goals. How many of you can relate to this scenario? Tracking your progress is essential when working towards reaching your fitness goals. Here are some reasons why you will benefit from tracking your progress along with a few great tips on how to do so successfully!

Benefits of tracking your fitness progress:

Find out if your current workout routine is effective.
If you don’t keep track of your progress, how will you know if what you are doing is actually working? Being able to notice changes to your body will tell you that all the hard work you’re doing is paying off.

Build your motivation.
It is much easier to stay on track, if you can look back and see that you lost a few pounds or shaved a few seconds off of your last run. Seeing that you are getting closer to reaching your goal will motivate you to keep up the great work!

Understand your body.
Understanding comes from the practice and experience of trial and error. There are many factors that impact our body; eating habits, sleep, how often you exercise and the intensity of your workouts to name a few. Monitoring your progress will teach you how to properly respond to your body’s needs.

How to start tracking your progress;

Circumference Measurements -
Measure your progress by tracking the measurements of your waist, hips and chest. Record your numbers every 15-20 days. Be sure to wear form-fitting clothes when taking your measurements, and always be sure to measure in the same place each time. Remember the numbers on your scale won’t show you how many inches you’ve lost around your waist!

Take a “Before” Photo -
Not many people are happy with the way they look in their “before” photos (I didn’t either), but it’s a great way to track your progress. Take a progress photo every month, so you can notice the physical changes to your body. Sometimes it’s hard to notice a change in your body when you see yourself every day, but placing your “before” and “after” photos side by side will help you see that you are making progress!

Fitness Apps -
Oh the joys of modern technology! If you have a smartphone, there are MANY great apps you can use to track your fitness journey instead of having to write down your calories and foods in a journal! Play around with a few different apps and find which one suits you best. Here are a few good ones I have used:

MyPlate

MyFitnessPal

Lose It!

Nike+Running (awesome app to track your runs)

How your clothes fit-
I personally find this method to be one of my favorites. Of course the feeling sucks when I can’t button a pair of pants, but it also motivates me to work my butt off in the gym. So, find a piece of clothing you would like to fit into and try it on after a designated amount of time. If they start to fit better or become easier to put on, then you’re getting closer to achieving your fitness goals!

Try to remember that weight loss can take longer than you anticipated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your fitness routine is not working. If you incorporate strength training and cardio into your fitness routine while tracking your progress, you will not only start to see results in how you look but also in how you feel.

For a kick-butt workout that offers strength training and cardio, check out 9Round Fitness!